Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday March 30, 2011 @07:45PM
from the protecting-yourself-with-fresh-fruit dept.

jldailey618 writes "A group of scientists from Sao Paulo State University developed a way to use the nanocellulose fibers from bananas, pineapples, and other fruits to create incredibly strong, lightweight plastics. The plastic is up to four times stronger and 30 percent lighter than petroleum-based plastics, and it rivals Kevlar — the material used in bullet proof vests — in strength."

The article says that one pound of nanocellulose can be used to produce 100 pounds of the plastic. So what else is in it? Maybe it's a journalistic error, but it would seem that that violates physical law...

The article says that one pound of nanocellulose can be used to produce 100 pounds of the plastic. So what else is in it? Maybe it's a journalistic error, but it would seem that that violates physical law...

Ever heard of an alloy?=1% is more than enough to effect a change in metals or plastics.

The article says that one pound of nanocellulose can be used to produce 100 pounds of the plastic. So what else is in it? Maybe it's a journalistic error, but it would seem that that violates physical law...

I really liked the topical Married With Children response (the other half of the raisins came from Japan?), but I think the simple answer is it's a reading comprehension, or writer overly compressing the message, issue: one pound of nanocellulose is used, but it is not the only ingredient; the important sentence ends the sixth paragraph: "These fibers can be added to other raw materials to produce reinforced plastic."

I also really liked the linked article in the fourth paragraph, about Ford exploring nanotechnology to get their vehicles' weight down. Competition will get us to the Singularity faster!

Old news. This has been known since the late 70s. It's terribly energy intensive. The material costs 30MWh to produce with some methods getting that down to 1MWh but with more complex processes.

I don't see anything that indicates an improvement in the process in that article that would make the material more cost effective or live up to the potentials mentioned in the wikipee article. It looks like the typical article meant to gather research money and it's been pi

Old news. This has been known since the late 70s. It's terribly energy intensive. The material costs 30MWh to produce with some methods getting that down to 1MWh but with more complex processes.

I don't see anything that indicates an improvement in the process in that article that would make the material more cost effective or live up to the potentials mentioned in the wikipee article. It looks like the typical article meant to gather research money and it's been picked up because of the presentation made at the chemical groups exposition.

As oil prices keep increasing, alternatives like this (combined with newer tech) become much more cost-effective. My question is: do these plastics degrade faster than petroleum based plastics? I have the giant garbage islands floating in the oceans in mind here.

The market for all it's ills is not insane unless directed to be insane by regulation, it's customers or it's megalomaniacal boss. It's difficult to have a whole organization be insane.:(

Without that insanity it will take prices reaching nsane levels to go to nanocellulosic material for mundane items. Unfortunately they won't be mundane items any longer as people will turn to cheaper materials. Status quo.

It's one of those remarkable products that it's nice get noticed as there are a lot of hungry entrepre

It's not a garbage island. It's tiny flecks of plastic which sometimes are maybe dense enough to form sludge. The whole garbage-land myth is a great let down.

Yeah, it's a major let down. I mean, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch [wikipedia.org] is the size of Texas, but people can't even walk on it, and the denser debris doesn't even float. Bummer! And the smaller North Atlantic Garbage Patch [wikipedia.org] is more than 3,000 miles long, but doesn't even have the decency to constitute a land bridge?! After those let downs, the Indian Ocean Garbage Patch [wikipedia.org] hardly even seems worth mentioning, especially when so much trash washes onto islands anyway. Why bother looking for "garbage islands" when t [cnn.com]

Odd but even though I question some information and research on environmental issues I've never really questioned that. I've seen credible pictures and there's been at least two groups visit both sites and do surveys. I think of them as energy islands, when it becomes economical we will clean those out.

I'm hoping the processes in development that can refine that mass with little toxic residue are available. They'll have plenty of energy.

I looked hoping there was more to it but there was not. I did find some more promising research articles but I didn't link to the pay2play sites and did not find any on the few free sites that qualified as relevant.

Nah. The US doesn't like anything dealing with pot...I mean hemp. But up here in Canada, we don't mind it a single bit. In fact I usually start my day with a couple of tablespoons of hemp hearts on my cereal or oatmeal.

When I did some work in the Philippines I had to go to a function where the president was going to attend, so went out and bought a high end barong (type of Philippine shirt). These were used in place of tuxedos (yes we wore pants too). The barong was made of banana fibre and was quite expensive (several hundred dollars at the time). I still have it. The interesting thing is that is does feel kid of plasticy and slippery. The fabric is partially see through (you wear a white tee shirt under it) and kind of stiff. Because of this, this article doesn't surprise me one bit.

I had a shirt made of eucalypt that was very light, plasticy feeling and hard wearing.

The thing I found most odd about it wasn't that such a synthetic feeling fabric came from a plant, but that I live in Australia where eucalypts originate and the shirt was made in China most probably from Chinese eucalypt plantations, being the largest in the world.

I would like to see more done with eucalypts for plastics. They are a great source of celulose and other goodies, grow quickly without needing much water and they are not a valuable food source like bananas, corn and pineapple. And there's a reason we call them gum trees.

Ive had alligator and ostrich, both were pretty good. Im not sure how close alligator is to croc. Ive also had elk, deer, moose, and bison, but neither are really a big deal where Im from up near Canada since its local. Id actually like to eat alligator more often, but its sort of a swamp-dweller food down here in the south US where I live now so you only get it at some Cajun restaurants. Ive always wanted to try snake. BTW I don't know how you guys eat Vegemite. Tried it once, never again. Cheers buddy.

My father has some socks made from bamboo fibre --- they feel like cotton, and apparently also behave like it. Given how easy bamboo is to grow (i.e., it's really hard to stop it), using it for fibre seems like a really good idea.

I stand corrected. I couldn't remember if it was banana or pineapple... they showed me both types at the store (it was at the Manila Hotel). It must have been pineapple as it was the more expensive of the two options they showed me. This was 12 years ago.

The material they banned was industrial hemp. They made it illegal to grow it under the guise of going after marijuana. Even though you could set an entire field of industrial hemp on fire and not get high they still managed to get it and marijuana covered under the same law and banned.

Technically, no. Your pothead buddy claimed that DuPont got hemp banned - a favorite lie of hippies and other assorted idiots. Also, industrial hemp isn't technically banned, even in the US - you can get a permit to grow it (it's just really hard to get one).

They made it illegal to grow it under the guise of going after marijuana. Even though you could set an entire field of industrial hemp on fire and not get high they still managed to get it and marijuana covered under the same law and banned.

That's a bit of a red-herring. Nobody ever suggested you could smoke hemp - the issue was that hemp fields made the ideal hiding spot for pot cultivation. Right now they get hidden in corn-fields and such, but tend to be relatively easy to spot from the air; you could grow millions of dollars worth of marijuana in a hemp field, and nobody would know unless they did a detailed ground-level inspection.

Note that I'm generally in favor of legalizing marijuana - I'm just apposed to lies and distortions.

Not sure what planet your from, but nothing is banned.

It's a controlled substance, hence you can get a license to grow it. Industrial hemp, or medicial marijuana. I repeat for you, a non stoner, who don't know exactly what you are talking about, NOTHING GOT BANNED.

When they got "industrial hemp" and "medical marijuana" changed into a controlled substance, they (being the corporation who just got the chemical formula's from germany, as part of WWI reparitians.), because plastic would NOT compete with the low cost and usuablility of hemp at the time. They purposely made it seem that it was marijuana they were trying to get contolled, when it was actually hemp they wanted out of the picture.

I have nothing to do with those sites or the book. I'm just an american who's tired of the lies and bullshit. And corporation being treated like they are the rich, since they rarely, and i mean, rarely get in trouble for the shit they do.

Oh, and i like to point out, yes, it was Dupont. So those hippies and other idiots who you think lie (probably because they are stoners), aren't. In fact, your the idiot now, but then, we knew that from your post. thanks for letting me share the real story.

A fairly interesting discussion of the politics surrounding the banning of hemp can be found in an early Allan Ginsberg book "The Marijuana Papers". The Congresscritter most deeply involved was a gent named Harry J. Ainslinger. If you search the Congressional Record around the 1930's or so you might be able to trace his arguments.

Not only does it have an extremely low THC content, but it also contains another cannabinol (I can't remember the name) that actually prevents you from getting high from THC.

Another big argument is that if industrial hemp were to be legalized, farmers could easily conceal marijuana within industrial hemp fields. This is very far from the truth. Industrial hemp and marijuana plants will cross pollinate (even if the fields are miles apart). The cross pollination renders the marijuana completely useless as

Petroleum was once (partly) fruits, too, eh? It's not a bad thing if we can sidestep the tens of millions of years in between and do it without massive energies or pressures. Same thing goes for fuel, of course, but I'm not holding my breath for biofuels, yet....

OMG, I see it right now: fruit made of plastic made of fruit, marketed as "100% fruit!"

See it? You can buy them in the grocery store today! They're called "fruit roll-ups" and are about the most disgusting substance ever alleged to be "food". And I think you can get them in "fun" fruit shapes to meet your other requirement.

Is strong really the correct term to use here? People think of kevlar being strong because it's used to stop bullets, but they're really completely wrong. Sure, it's stronger than steel, but not as strong as fiberglass or carbon fiber. You use kevlar in armor because it is tough, toughness being defined by the area under the stress/strain curve. It can absorb more energy than any other material. If it's as strong as kevlar, well then there are plenty of other natural and synthetic fibers that are just as capable, and this is nothing impressive. If it's as tough as kevlar, well then there is something of significant interest here.

indeed, one of the reasons to use it is the low elongation at break, and the relatively high stress at breakage. Some have suggested using spider silk for bulletproof vests, and indeed it would stop the bullet... just several meters on the other side of your body. more in the introduction of my thesis http://bit.ly/gfPdDN [bit.ly]

Look, the only reason I know the tricks is because of my rampant porn viewing. A strange link like that tends to lead to some download or infected image that maliciously affects your computer. Its easily removed often enough or avoided by not clicking "open", but you begin to filter links like that out from experience. Since most of / . users view porn as much or more often than I do, you should consider what I said as an attempt to help you be credibly heard. Any other view of what I said would be wrong.

Kevlar is a very useful nylon-like polymer because it's tough. What the means is that it can absorb a lot of energy before it breaks. It can't hold up a lot of weight (so not strong) but if you hit it very hard it flexes instead of breaking. That is why it is useful in bullet proof vests because you want to spread the impact and absorb the energy before it gets to your body. Toughness is a function of how much things can stretch together with strength -eg. rubber with low strength and a lot of elongation can absorb a lot more energy than glass with high strength and nearly no elongation.By volume Kevlar is nowhere near as strong as mild steel so a 10mm diameter rod of the stuff is not going to be able to suspend anywhere near as much weight as a 10mm diameter rod of mild steel. It doesn't weigh much though so you might be able to make something out of 1kg of Kevlar that can take as much load as 1kg of mild steel.It's very strong for a plastic (think of nylon fishing line - it's like that but stronger) but plastics are not very strong materials unless you reinforce them with something that is such as glass or graphite fibre.

Except that kevlar and other aramid fibres are almost entirely unlike nylon or dyneema. The structure is completely different, the aramid fibres can withstand high temperatures whereas the nylon fibres cannot (different chemistry), and the manufacturing process is completely different.

Second point: the aramid fibres have a very small elongation (strain) at break, and can hold a large amount of stress. Indeed, on a per weight basis, they are "stronger" than steel, by volume, it is not so good. However, they do not exhibit much creep (but nylon does!) and do not suffer from effects of prolonged loading.

Lastly, they do not bend well, and they cannot handle sharp edges so well because of that. Interestingly, you can get two kinds of protective vests with different weaves: one bulletproof type and one knifeproof type. the knifeproof vest is not bulletproof and vice versa.

You may want to consider reading the introduction to my Ph.D. thesis (or its references) on this material as it appears you may be slightly misinformed. You can get it here: http://bit.ly/gfPdDN [bit.ly]

I was attempting to explain it all in very general terms with materials the general public can identify and didn't expect to get labelled "misinformed" for doing so:(Initially I thought the redundancy showed you hadn't bothered to read the entire short post before putting me in my place. I'm probably wrong on both counts.Other than that, thanks for the link that supplies more detail.

Sorry for sounding curt.. I guess it was the "nylon-like" mention that kickstarted my inner chemical engineer. Also I have not yet had my second coffee today, so I too realize I made a mistake when referring to "spider-silk" in another comment without indicating that spiders spin a large variety of silk.

As for educating the public, that is a commendable goal and it seems to me like we could use some of that! I also get the impression that many believe that after they finish their education, they are no long

Second point: the aramid fibres have a very small elongation (strain) at break, and can hold a large amount of stress. Indeed, on a per weight basis, they are "stronger" than steel, by volume, it is not so good.

Try a Nylon semicolon instead of the Kevlar comma. You'd already used a carborundum colon in the preceding sentence, so I know you have it in your bit kit.

Indeed, on a per weight basis, they are "stronger" than steel; by volume, it is not so good.

the UHMWPE fibres as Spectra and Dyneema are high-modulus fibres, so their strain (extension) is small when stress (load) is applied. This makes for good bulletproof material in principle. The problems with these materials are that they show creep (they gradually extend when a constant load is applied), and that their good properties reduce dramatically at elevated temperatures.

"Spider silk" is a bit of a misnomer as spiders produce a great variety of silk threads, some have high and some low modulus. The "

UHMWPE is used widely in bullet proof vests.While it does have creep, the creep really is very low, and with some jiggerpokery, can be reduced to be less than steel for much less weight, though more volume. Jiggerpokery being a bit of stretching it while heating it up. Dynex Dux is such a product, and they make standing rigging for sailboats. It ends up being much stronger than the steel you need since you size for creep, but with a bit of oversizing the creep is a good bit less than the stainless rigging i

you talk about volume to strength ratio. no one cares about that. people care about weight to strength ratio. kevlar has a specific strength 10 times higher than that of steel. so yeah. a kg of kevlar is a hell of a lot stronger than a kg of steel.

I talk about strength in terms of cross sectional area because that's what strength MEANS - maximum force per unit of cross sectional area. Many people make the mistake you just did and think that kevlar, polyester, PVC, balsa wood, foam packaging etc is stronger than steel when it is not. That's why I wrote what I wrote above to try to clear up confusion like yours above.As an example in an aircraft they use high strength steels for landing gear parts because actual strength is more important there than

On a serious note, a lot of 'projects' seem to come out like this one, but very few ever seem to make it to commercial scale and distribution, let alone success and continued survival. "Alternative" tech never seems to sell, quite possibly because it's 'alternative', and the big boys have enough cash to make most things go away that would cut into their profits, like that pesky cold fusion.

enough cash to make most things go away that would cut into their profits

I'm not going to say that's never happened, but if it's cheaper and/or better than the existing products, why wouldn't the big boys take the huge PR benefit of being "renewable", save a ton on industrial-scale production, and leverage the advantages of their existing product distribution networks to make more money?

These frequent "big materials breakthrough" articles really should wait until they've been reviewed in some publication that knows something about the subject, like Chemical Engineering News. The paper, "Agro-waste nanocomposites for automotive applications" [acs.org], presented at the American Chemical Society is available. The claims there aren't as strong as the ones in the press release. Last year, the same author presented "Agro-Wastes Nanocomposites for Medical Application". Wonder what happened to that.

The trouble with many of these "new materials" is that they have some awful flaw. This one, for example, is "biodegradable". That means it rots. That's OK for packaging, but not for parts. Then there are basic questions, like will it tolerate water? Can it be made into thread, sheet, or film? Made at a reasonable cost?

There's been interest in finding useful things to make out of cellulose for the last century. There's so much agricultural waste around, and it would be nice to use it for something. Most of the ideas don't work out, but people keep trying.

Would you rather we keep ignorantly mining non-renewable materials until there's none left, at which point we'd be forced to go this way anyway?

Seriously. Corn is actually a horrible example as there's a fuckton more efficient crops out there to be used for such a thing, but other than that, I applaud this creative use of stuff that we can grow in a relatively short amount of time.

Well, don't get upset yet. It isn't strength alone which makes kevlar so attractive. There are other materials which meet or exceed kevlar's strength but are not as desirable because of other traits. What makes kevlar so attractive is its strength in combination with its light weight, flexibility, and elasticity. Without that combination, kevlar wouldn't be attractive for what its most commonly used for; bullet proof vests and composite construction.

I was thinking exactly the same thing myself. Recycleable plastics made from plants, sure. Sounds good. Rots when left lying about.... if we're talking multiple decades, again, sure. If we're talking less than 3-4 times the expected lifetime of the manufactured item, no.

As with everything biodegradable plastics are not perfect for everything. Some things aren't supposed to get wet: the casing of my PC could be made out of it (maybe even the PCB's). My Blu-ray player could easily be made with a biodegradable casing. Some things could be made of materials that become biodegradable when treated with a base, like raincoats (haven't seen the materials yet). The article suggests cars, as you do. I do hope they do one of these options:

They're using the stems and leaves of the plants. As in the left over parts after food is processed. They can also use the plants that rot in the field or don't make the grade for edibility I'd imagine. There was word of Pepsi switching its bottling process over to use plastics made out of the leftover plant matter from their food processing plants a few weeks ago. I imagine this would be much the same and not like the corn based ethonal boondoggle.